Thursday, September 18, 2008

So, for those who haven't heard, the latest beta push has introduced a long-awaited schematic for our engineering friends -- Motorcycles. And from the looks of this screenshot (which I'm borrowing from WoW Insider, as I don't have beta access myself), it's going to be a pretty sweet ride. I had been considering dropping engineering on Kibler for some other profession, but now I'm pretty sure I want to stick with engineering so I can ride a Hog (Which begs the question of why hunters can't use their pet hog as a mount, but I digress).

Something is missing, though. Motorcycles and Choppers are great and all, but while we now have no wheels and two wheels covered, it seems to me engineers need a four-wheeled mount. And with the new mechanic of taking riders, it seems to me the perfect addition to the engineer's reportoire would be a taxi cab!

I don't think the cab should work like other mounts. For one, I don't think it should go in your mount spellbook like other mounts will, especially since that gives engineers an unfair advantage when it comes to getting the mount-based achievements coming with the expansion. Instead, I think making the cab should culminate with a soulbound whistle that goes in your inventory.

Now, most mounts just kind of appear when you summon them. Not so with the engineer's taxi. When you whistle for your cab, your character should literally put two fingers up to their mouth and whistle for a couple seconds, after which the cab drives up from off-screen. Of course, the animation would need to only be visible to the person summoning it, or else other people would see cars randomly materializing on their heads, but I think that a custom summoning animation would be damn cool.

If you look at the picture above of the motorcycle, you can see that the license plate says "Pwn". A nice touch, to be sure, but I'm not so fond of just taking some random phrase out of gaming culture. Instead, I want to have a license plate that says something about the mount. I'm not 100% decided on what that should be just yet, but as this is a fresh new idea, how about "FRESH", at least for now.

I'd also like to steal an idea from the epic chopper. As I'm sure most of you know, one of the parts required for an engineer to make their epic flyer is a hula girl doll purchased from Griftah in Shattrath. And if you look at the actual mount, sure enough, there's a hula girl on the control panel. Now, a bobblehead doll would work for the cab, too, but I don't want to steal something quite that directly. So what else do you think of when you think of car ornaments? An air freshener would work, but frankly, this is a taxi cab, it's supposed to smell bad. What else? Why, Fuzzy Dice of course! A pair of dice hanging from the rear view mirror would be perfect! And as with the hula girl statue, you'd have to buy a couple to make the car. I'm thinking you could buy them from the guard at the cage in Gadgetzan, with the backstory that he's a compulsive gambler, and has been betting on dice and cage matches for years.

Oh, one other thing. I want to let even low-level characters build a taxi. I think it would be thematically appropriate, a low level character driving around in a taxi, just trying to make enough from tips to save up for the gear he needs to become a true adventurer at 80. Thus, I don't think this should be an epic mount. Frankly, I think the epic quality car should be some sexy sports car. So the cab will be a rare mount, only.

Whoops, I almost forgot to put the cut in today's entry . . . continued after the break.

So, to recap:

You whistle for your cab, and when it comes nearThe license plate says "FRESH" and has a dice in the mirror.If anything, I would say that this cab is rare.On second thought, nah, forget it. Yo homes, you've been Bel-Air'd!